The artist who sold the most CDs in 2016 hasn’t toured in over 200 years, but is still more famous than Drake. According to a report on Billboard, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made a massive comeback this year with a career-spanning box set that left other CD sales look weak in comparison.
Released in October, Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition is a 200-disc collection of Mozart’s entire musical catalogue. From his symphonies to his concertos, down to little scraps and fragments of his work, the set is one of the most comprehensive collections of Mozart’s music ever released. And at just over $300, it’s not even that expensive (considering the amount of music it contains).
The box set itself is a fascinating collection, and now it has the modern honor of moving more CDs than Beyonce, Kanye West, Adele, or David Bowie. While the set has sold just over 6,200 units, thanks to the hundreds of CDs it contains, it means that Mozart has sold 1.25 million discs. Pretty damn impressive for a long-dead composer.
But as impressive as it is, the figure may be ever so slightly off. According to the single one-star review for the set on Amazon, some of them may have shipped missing one of the discs (Disc 33, which contains portions of “Quintets String, Horn, Piano, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Adagio & Fugue, Clarinet Quintet, Adagio & Rondo”). It’s unclear how many of the sets were affected, although even with a small portion of his work missing, Mozart would still likely come out on top.